Will We Ever Learn, We've Been Here Before?
by EmitTime
Summary: Tony was the one whom he'd done wrong. Peggy was the one whom he could never have. Bucky… Bucky was still the one whom he lived for. (While on his solo mission, Steve makes a different choice.)


Something in Steve is broken.

It twisted into misery when he watched Bucky fall from that train a lifetime ago.

When he was first freed from the ice – he doesn't like it when they say that he was _recovered_, because that never happened, not fully – the wound was numb at first, more like a scar, but then it reopened with a vengeance, when he found out that Bucky was _alive and hurting_, trapped in his own mind and at the hands of evil people. The pain drove him to do things that no one had thought Captain America capable of. It drove him to destroy his connection, his _promises_, to Tony, because the only balm for his constant ache was Bucky.

It was contorted into visceral pain once more when he watched Bucky fall away into dust. It was an open, gaping wound for every day since Thanos' reckoning, sucking the life out of him as it bled a little more every time he missed his best friend anew.

As much as he tried to focus on helping other people and carry the message of hope and resilience that he was supposed to stand for, he felt himself changing. The pain was turning him into a different person, someone who thought only in terms of what he had lost and what he had to gain. He didn't think twice about using the power of the scepter on another version of himself, or stealing a few Pym particles. Some part of him had decided that it was _his_ time, to take what he wanted most.

In the end, fear of what he could still lose almost clouded his perception of exactly what that was.

That fear was what possessed him to tell Bucky goodbye, on his own terms this time, before the man who meant the most to him could be ripped from his arms again.

"I'm going to miss you, bud," Bucky had said, with quiet certainty, just before he let Steve go.

The hurt gnawed at both of their hearts, because the wound was _theirs._

Watching Steve disappear on that platform wrenched something that had long been broken in Bucky, too.

.x.x.x.

The thing about repeated loss is that it never really becomes easier to handle.

Steve breathed in the air of the past and realized that there wasn't much left in his timeline for him. At least, it felt that way.

He thought that he had known loss before, waking up from the ice to realize that his team and family were all dead. He'd found Peggy, only to lose her to time's demands. He'd found and lost Bucky over and over again.

He'd torn his newfound family apart, and now he was losing them, too.

Natasha, who had become one of his best friends and taught him so much about himself and this modern world, was gone. She had held their team together for years, even when he couldn't, and then she had made the ultimate sacrifice.

_I'm still trying to be better,_ her tearful words, some of the last she ever spoke to him, were still haunting. He couldn't say that he'd been striving for the same.

Then, there was Tony, the man he'd clashed with from the very beginning, only for them to seem fated to work together. They had gone from hating what the other stood for to leaning on the other as an equal, as a friend. Tony had let him into his world when Steve had nothing of him, and then Steve had trampled all over that trust, nearly killing him, if not directly, then through the resentment that Tony had finally been strong enough to overcome in the end.

Tony had given everything for the world, when he'd finally had the perfect one of his own. He'd had so much to lose, more than Steve had, and he'd still done it. He'd even planned for it.

And here's the thing – Steve isn't sure if he can live in a world where Natasha and Tony are dead. He isn't sure that he can watch Morgan Stark and Peter Parker grow up, or look Pepper in the eye, knowing how he treated Tony before his death.

He isn't sure that he can be Captain America anymore – not in the way that people want him to be.

They've all changed, anyway.

_It's time for me to be who I am, not who I'm supposed to be, _Thor had said.

The thing about being an icon for so long is that finding what's underneath the surface is difficult and frightening, and sometimes Steve doesn't know if there is anything more to himself than this selfishness, the one thing that Captain America tries to hide.

.x.x.x.

Steve only spent one night with Peggy before he realized that he had made the wrong decision.

He thought this would be his salvation, this chance at a perfect life. He could marry Peggy, find Bucky and save him sooner, spend his days with the two of them, like they should have been able to do in the first place.

But the Bucky in this timeline won't be _his_ Bucky, not really. And he can't pretend that he doesn't know how Peggy's story ended, how she found happiness and a fulfilling life without him.

He laid awake, holding the woman he loved in his arms, still feeling that jagged, gaping hole that he kept trying to fill.

He was beginning to understand Tony's hesitance to put stock in Scot's time machine idea, his firm dedication to Pepper and Morgan and the life with them that he would do anything to protect. He was here, in part, because Tony had told him to find – no, to _build_ – a life for himself, a life just for Steve Rogers.

Still, however, the memory of Tony haunted him. If there was anything that Steve knew for certain, it was that he never wanted to betray anyone the way he'd done Tony.

_I __**needed**__ you,_ Tony's statement echoed. _Past tense. You said that if we lost, we would do that together. Well, I lost._

And that was the key to overcoming this fear. He couldn't abandon Bucky like he'd left Tony. He was so afraid to lose Bucky again, but if he stayed in this timeline, then he would lose him. And he would be taking himself from Bucky, too, living the best years of his life without him.

He thinks about his losses and his mistakes. He thinks about the fellow in the support group who talked about his first date with the man who cried, how they had both cried and then agreed to see one another again, and how that seemed so _right _to him, so hopeful.

He thinks about what moving on really means.

Who was he to decide that it was the end of the line? A little over five seconds apart would be far too long. He knew the life that he was meant to build now.

Tony was the one whom he'd done wrong. Peggy was the one whom he could never have. Bucky… Bucky was still the one whom he lived for.

.x.x.x.

He told Peggy the whole truth in the morning. She held his cheek in her palm and thanked him for their dance, and told him to be happy.

Steve thought that, maybe now, he really could be.

.x.x.x.

Bruce pressed the button and Steve was back, just like that.

The scientist and Sam breathed sighs of relief, glancing at one another and grinning.

Bucky stared at his best friend, feeling shock and a special kind of hope, the kind that ignited whenever Steve embraced him or chose him above the easier options.

"I thought you were gonna take a little longer," he spoke up, unable to keep the surprise from his tone.

"I thought about it," Steve admitted, feeling chagrinned. He had suspected that Bucky knew what he had wanted to do, but knowing for certain that his best friend had been prepared for him to live a life without him…that was a new kind of ache, one all of his own doing. "But I changed my mind."

"I'm glad." Bucky watched as Steve stepped down from the platform and approached, feeling a weight lift from his shoulders even as apprehension had him tense and waiting. "Did you do everything you needed to do?"

They both knew that he meant more than returning the infinity stones.

"Yeah, I did. I was ready to come back, sooner than I thought. And," Steve was standing close to Bucky now, close enough to reach out and clasp his shoulder. His earnest gaze bored into the other man, and the last wall between them began to crumble. "I missed you, too."

Bucky smiled, a fragile expression on his weary features. This was the moment that would make or break them; he could feel it. Steve was all he had and here was the moment in which he found out if he really could have him, after all these years.

"I'm scared, Buck." Steve's voice was just above a whisper, a tone reserved for confessions. He reached up to touch Bucky's face, gingerly and gently so that the movement could not be mistaken for anything other than tender affection. "I can't lose you again. But I want to be with you…to grow old, with _you_."

"It's okay," Bucky assured, his hands finding their way to Steve's upper arms, rubbing up and down comfortingly, his metal arm warm and whirring softly with the slow effort of administering the soft touch. He was not ignorant of the way Steve leaned into him, the way he'd done ever since they'd rekindled their friendship. He looked younger in this moment, eyes glossy with unshed tears and expression open in the face of his honesty. It was almost like the old days, when Bucky wanted to be his shield from the world.

Only, now, they were each other's protector, the only one who would always want the other just as they were, outside of the uniforms and the mantles.

"I just let you go once, Stevie. I'm not going to do that again." The statement was both a reassurance and a promise, emphasized by the way Bucky gripped the nape of Steve's neck with his good hand, a solid and anchoring touch.

When their lips met, it was exactly halfway, a choice, a statement – something to build their life on.

The hope, the goodness, the strength to carry on – they would breathe that back into each other. And the wound would heal.

_End_


End file.
